


It Rained In Seattle

by thedenouement



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Clexa Week 2018, Constantly Mistaken For A Couple, Doctor Clarke, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Kid Fic, Morning After, Seattle, clarke's a loveable hot mess, it's cute, lexa owns a dog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-03-23 05:15:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13780494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedenouement/pseuds/thedenouement
Summary: The "I adopted a kid because I thought I was responsible but things got hectic and I'm a hot mess, and you're my neighbour who helps me with childcare but now the kid thinks that we're both their parents and I'm really in love with you" au, in which Clarke adopts a three-year-old and Lexa owns a dog.





	1. Chapter 1

The sun shone and the flowers bloomed and it rained in Seattle. 

Those were the truths that Clarke knew, but in peeling the water-logged raincoat back from the three-year-old’s cough-rattled frame, she wished she didn’t, if only to save the way her heart cracked under the weight of the ugly sound. 

Who thoughts adopting a child on her own would be a good idea, anyway? In a city she hadn’t grown up in, without the support of her parents? She realised now with corroding guilt why the social working had looked at her askance when Clarke explained her situation. 

Legally, the stiff-nosed woman with her clipboard and bic pen couldn’t do anything to stop the adoption going through. Clarke had good a good job with better prospects – the name Griffin, as in Abigail Griffin the chief of Neuro at Mount Sinai had its perks –  and a stable home environment that would be certainly better for the orphaned victim of the car wreck that had killed her parents than the group home social services had set up for her. But she had advised Clarke, strongly one might say, to find a sturdy support system. 

Seven months later, drowning in online forums and sugar-free juice boxes, that was the one thing the blonde was still in search for. 

The rained sleeted down. The handle of her front door was stagnant under her heavy-handed rattle. “Shit.” Clarke shook the pockets of her rain jacket as the face of the little girl by her knees twisted comically. “Andy,” the blonde counched on the wet stone of her stoop, grimacing at the dampness that seeped through the denim. “Do you know where Mommy put her keys?” 

The three-year-old jabbed a wet finger at the glass panel beside the door and Clarke groaned at the sight of her kering sitting on the hall table. Her phone was dead too – it had been on ten percent when they left the house for a park down the street that they had found sodden and water-logged. 

Andy coughed, a harsh, wet sound that rattled in her chest and Clarke winched, adjusting the neckline of her sweater over the three-year-old’s collarbone, thinking about her keys and how she had managed to walk out of the house without them. 

It had been a hectic afternoon admittedly, Andy was fussy and the both of them were going stir-crazy from cabin fever –  _ ‘Dora’  _ was only education the first four times around. But there had been a break in the weather, her little girl had sat herself in front of the window in the living room with Gilbert the ill-proportioned bear wedged under her chin, to watch the passage of the lone patch of blue across the sky. Tugging on the cuff of Clarke’s sweater and prying her from her laptop on the kitchen counter when it was above them. She had big eyes and Clarke’s memorized promise on her lips, the one she had made the day she was late picking Andy up from daycare because she had had to cover another doctor’s shift with unbound reluctance because it meant she couldn’t take her little girl to the park on the way home. 

Which way why Clarke had caved so easily when Andy reminded her with big eyes, and had bundled her into rainboots and a coat, trying to ignore the annoying inkling that told her she wasn’t doing enough as she sat on the cool bench by the playground and watched the three-year-old splash puddle water into her boots. 

She told herself Andy didn’t care – that at her age she was more preoccupied with the crepe paper hearts her daycare teacher had promised they would make for Valentines next week – but Clarke was a hot mess with a three-year-old and a month-old promotion that had her working like a pack mule. This was going to be the straw that broke her. 

Pressing Andy’s frame to the side of her leg, Clarke eyed her neighbours porch across the dip of their shared driveway. Hers was a contemporary looking, semi-detached townhouse that her mother had helped her fund when she got her residency out here and the yellow-gold light spilling from the glass encased entrance next to her was like a beacon against the steadying dim of early evening. 

Mouth twisting, Clarke made her choice. 

“C’mon sweetheart,” she cooed, She pulled the child onto her hip, feeling her feet swing in their dripping rain boots and draped her sodden yellow rain jacket over her arm. Andy sneezed, cold nose in Clarke’s neck and she pulled her closer. 

“Lexa?” Andy whined, tongue tripping through her teeth. 

“Yeah,” Clarke confirmed, pressing the doorbell with a bluing finger and brushing limp strands of blonde hair out of her face, hoping she didn't look like a drowned sewer dweller as she bounced Andy further up her him, shivering involuntarily. 

A dog yipped behind the door.  _ ‘Fish!’  _ the familiar voice barked in retaliation.  _ ‘Upstairs,’  _ it ordered,  _ ‘now.’  _ When her neighbour opened the door she was sweater-clad and glasses-wearing – round, tortoiseshell frames around her eyes – jeans rolled up at the ankle showcasing ridiculous Pippy Long Stocking-esque striped socks.

“Hi.” Clarke trapped her breath in her chest and appraised Lexa’s reaction to them, rain soaked and shivering, but the brunette grinned. 

“The intrepid adventurers are back from the park, I see,” she smiled and it warmed Clarke from her stomach. Intrepid was certainty a word for them, mud clung to their boots and there was wet grass in Andy’s hair from a head-first dive off the wet slide. 

Clarke smiled, “I’m sorry,” she apologised in earnest. “I left my keys inside and the security company has the spare but my phone is flat, would you mind if I called them from your landline?” Andy sneezed again, violently so that the tremors shook her frame and Clarke soothed her hands up the vertebrae of her spine thinking that the timing couldn’t have been better if Clarke had coached her. 

“Not at all,” Lexa opened the door for them and Clarke sagged in an all-encompassing kind of relief that echoed in her cold bones. She toed off her rain boots, juggling child and sodden rain jacket and Lexa tsked quietly. 

“Here,” she offered, her voice a low hum. She pulled a shivering Andy into her arms and the child found solace in the warmth of the familiar sweatered chest, giggling a half-hearted  _ ‘exa,’  _ syllables slurred into one another in exhaustion. 

It was past six, Clarke guessed, they would usually be halfway through dinner and thinking about a bath now, as per the haphazard routine Clarke had established when an online parenting website had prescribed it as a must. She was still ironing out the kinks of it; understanding that Andy was fussy about eating dinner – the dietitian was third on her to-do list – but clapped happily through her bath. How the three-year-old should be put down early because the usually outgoing child clung to Clarke like a bush baby at the prospect of her bed and how she was skittish around busy highways so that Clarke had to stick to suburban streets and ease her back into it as per the suggestion of the family therapist they had appointments with monthly. 

Hands now free, Clarke hung her dripping jacket on the hook by the door, hanging Andy’s by the hood over the top of her own, fingers trailing the short expanse of waterproof material before she lined up their boots beneath the rack and wiggled her toes in the sagging ends of her socks. She peeled them off too. 

“How did her vaccinations go on Tuesday?” Lexa asked as they made their way upstairs. Clarke’s hair hung limp and there was water under the collar of her sweater. She wrung it out with cold hands.

“Good,” Clarke nodded, “she fussed a bit at the doctor’s office but I bribed her with mint-chip ice-cream and she brightened up.”

“Ah,” Lexa grinned, “you have good taste Dee.” Andy smiled at the soft nickname and Lexa pressed a messy kiss to where the three-year-old’s temple met the unruly line of her unbrushed hair and released the child, feet kicking in soggy socks, onto the plush carpet of Lexa’s living room. They watched her go wheeling to the sofa in a tangle of uncoordinated limbs where the golden-brown labrador puppy cocked his head, ear fur frizzing like it had had a blow out. 

“Fish!,” Andy squealed, greeting her self-proclaimed best friend. Fish yipped in happy reply, his wet nose raising to her hands. “Mommy,” her little finger pointed, “is Fish!” 

“I see that baby.” Clarke stopped by her daughter on the way to where Lexa’s landline sat perched on the wall in the kitchen, readjusting the part in her hair with cold fingers – apologising in profuse little whispers for the cold – and combed the wet bangs down her forehead. A haircut, she decided, would be bumped up to fifth, above find new cereal but below procuring a spare key.

* * *

 

“No, house  _ ‘b’ _ ,” Clarke raked a hand through the messy tendrils of hair freeing themselves from her half-professional bun, phone to her ear. The security company was doing its best to make her unproductive as she sat in the on call room, the long sleeve under her scrubs pushed up to her elbow. 

_ “Do you have your four digit pin?”  _

Fingers fisted in her in the hair by her temple, Clarke pressed her eyes, visualising the mess of papers in the metal odds and ends rack on the kitchen bench. She would have written the pin for the security company on a post-it when she had signed up originally but she couldn’t for the life of her remember. “No,” she groaned in reply. Someone knocked on the door. “Look,” she reasoned, “can I get back to you in a day or so, I’m on call.” 

_ “Of course ma’am.”  _

“Thanks.” 

She ended the call and tucked her phone into the pocket of her scrubs and shrugged on her coat back on, crossing the room to open the door. 

“How’s the Mrs.?”

Cocky smirk and powder blue scrubs, the dark haired nurse slung herself across the doorframe, ponytail scraped tight on the crown of her head and seemingly unphased with the dark smudge of blood on her shirt. 

“You’re not funny, Octavia,” Clarke informed her as they walked.    
“Really?” the brunette grinned, “because I’ve been told otherwise.” 

“Then you’ve been told wrong.” Clarke skimmed a patient's charts that was handed to her by a waiting intern and handed them back with a nod and a short,  _ ‘give me five.’  _ She couldn’t say she regretted telling the brunette about her quiet neighbour with the labrador puppy that helped with Andy when she needed it – Octavia was the first person she became friendly with in the city and it was nice to have a confidant that wasn’t her mother a thousand miles away over the phone. Still, the teasing was getting old, Clarke refused to believe she was as smitted as her friend said. 

“Anyway, it wasn’t Lexa it was the security company,” Clarke corrected her, “I called them about getting a spare key and they’re being about as helpful as usual.” 

“I’ll take your word for it,” Octavia hummed, like the considerably less exciting answer was a buzzkill. “We’re having after-shift drinks tonight,” she reminded the doctor, “you’re invited. Indebted practically since you’ve missed the last four times.” 

“I can’t, O, I have to pick my kid up.” 

Octavia picked at her scrubs and sniffed, “wow,” she teased, “that’s sad.” But the look Clarke gave her – the terse  _ ‘please, O, I’m on the end of my tether’  _ look that had become a staple with the blonde – silenced her effectively. Octavia knew the weight that had descended on her friend since the introduction of Andy into her life as much as she knew the light the spread to the blonde’s eyes every time someone mentioned the three-year-old. She cared about Andy because she loved her immeasurably and no matter how many times the hospital staff had told Clarke it would be fine to bring her in every once in the while – she was the resident hospital kid, spending a month in the peds wing before Clarke offered to take her in – the doctor still felt she wasn’t doing enough. That much was painfully obvious. 

“It’s okay,” the brunette conceded as they came up to a curtained off bed in the end of a ward. “I’m sure you and Lexa will have a lovely evening.” 

“Octavia, if I hear another word about the romance you’ve built up between myself and my neighbour, I swear to god –” she raked the curtain back, Octavia on her heels, “– hello, Mrs. Ward, how are we this morning –” The woman replied  _ ‘good’  _ and nodded in reply to the doctors perfunctory questions. She signed off the patient charts on the clipboard and shut the curtain. “She helps out with Andy,” she informed the nurse hotly, “that’s it. She doesn't like me.” 

“But you like her.” 

“That’s besides the question.” 

“Au contraire, doctor, I believe that is precisely the question.” 

Saved from further interrogation by the shrill fring of her phone, Clarke felt her heart-rate skyrocket insurmountably at the caller ID:  _ ‘Andy’s Daycare’.  _ She unlocked it swiftly, swallowing. “This is Clarke.” 

_ “Hello, yes, this is Emma, from the daycare center. I’m calling about Andy.”  _

Clarke could feel the headache descending in her temples like the vestiges of a summer storm. “Is she okay?” 

_ “She isn’t feeling well –”  _ well versed, the woman on the line went to assure the doctor before she could complete her intake of breath,  _ “– it isn’t serious. She was sick about ten minutes ago and has a mild temperature so we think it might be a stomach bug but center policy says we need you to take her home in case it’s contagious.”  _

She could feel the concern in Octavia’s eyes on her back where she was turned from the hall, toe of her sensible shoes kicking the linoleum. A stomach bug? She didn’t recall Andy’s teacher saying one had been going around the last time she picked her up. Or had she? Did they have child friendly painkillers at home? She resolved to swing past the pharmacy on the way to the carpark. Fisting her hand in the free tendrils of her hair, Clarke nodded, “yes,” she breathed, “yes, okay. I can be there in twenty minute.” 

_ “Thanks, Clarke.”  _

“Okay, Emma.” 

To Octavia, she said, “Andy isn’t well. I need to pick her up, it’s center policy.” It was a question, not a statement and the nurse nodded immediately. 

“I can find cover for your shift,” she nodded, “is the kid okay?” 

“Yes, it isn’t serious. They think it’s a stomach bug.” She tailed Clarke along the hall to the locker room where the blonde tugged at the mechanism of her locker until her hands shook in frustration and she had to nudge the blonde out of the way. 

“Hey,” she hummed, aware of the other doctors, changing in and out of clean and dirtied scrubs. “Clarke, take a breath.” She watched her sit down on the bench in the aisle before unlocking it, handing her friend street clothes, jeans and a jacket to go over the long-sleeve rolled up under her scrubs, all of which the blonde took gingerly and pulled on without a word until she was finished and tucking her hair back again with the hairband clinging to her wrist. “Thanks, O.” 

“Just take care of the kid,” she grinned, as she headed back into the hall, “and I’m still waiting on an invite to that house-warming.”

“I’ve been here for a year, it doesn’t count as a house-warning anymore!” Clarke hollered after her. 

She grabbed her things – keys, wallet, phone bag – and headed to the parking lot. 

She had an early shift tomorrow. She had planned on leaving Andy with Lexa in the morning as the brunette had offered to drop the three-year-old at the daycare center on her way to work, should she call her and tell her it probably wouldn't be necessary? If they were sending her home today it wasn’t likely they would let her back tomorrow. Clarke stared at her phone in the passenger seat, Octavia’s teases ringing in her head like a middle school taunt and suddenly found her situation inexplicably awkward. What were they doing? 

She had to admit their relationship was unconventional at best. Friend who juggle child care would be apt, but Lexa knew some of the most intimate details of Clarke’s domestic life – the mundane mutterings at the end of a work day, the way she liked her coffee – in a way that made her sure it was more than that. Not to mention her dog was an endless source of entertainment for a fussy toddler. 

Pushing her key into the ignition, she listed these things in her head as she turned onto the road, finding solace in the grey-black asphalt where existentialism lay, hands dancing on the leather of her steering wheel. She worked her thumb into a seam in the hard material. 

Clarke hadn’t thought much of her neighbour when the brunette had moved in eleven months ago. The truck in their shared drive, muddy dog at her side. Her first thought had been to hope the white-gold animal wouldn’t keep her up at night but the soft-spoken woman and her labrador weren’t influencers in her insular world until they intercepted her on her doorstep five months later – the brunette’s brow dipped delicately and hair around her ears as she asked if a potential hostage situation could be the cause of the streaming child trying to Houdini her way out of the doctor’s arms. 

Clarke couldn’t tell if she was joking. 

Her eyes were disarming, verdant green, more-so than the greying-green grass on the verge as she offered to hold something while Clarke unlocked the door. 

_ ‘No kidnapping,’ _ the blonde assured her but her laugh grated on her teeth, felt like a plea for help.  _ ‘She’s, uh, she’s mine.’ _

_ ‘Yours?’ _

Clarke nodded and chewed her bottom lip. Barely two months into guardianship and it felt grossly disrespectful to call Andy hers. The thought ate at her.  _ ‘Now she is.’  _

Lexa cocked her head. She had little dents on the bridge of her nose and reading glasses protruding from her jean pocket, Clarke could see the outline under the hem of her sweater.

_ ‘She’s adopted.’ _

_ ‘Ah.’ _

Andy squawked unhappily and Clarke was forced to let her down before she hurt herself. The daycare center had told her the toddler had been disruptive all day, she didn’t sleep when the other children were sleeping, she found out how to rattle the sides of her crib to wake the others and she had been temper tantruming when Clarke picked her up. She watched the three-year-old flee down the hallway, face like thunder and ruddy cheeks, with anxiety clawing at her chest and the ever growing reminder to baby proof.  _ ‘And I’m in over my head.’ _

_ ‘We all have those days. Tell – uh –’  _ watching Lexa stutter was like a strange contradiction to the times she had spoken to her over swapped out mail and the offending neighbour on the left hand side of them’s late night habits. The brunette was eloquent, she spoke in a timbre that Clarke likened to a lullaby but the blush that cowered under the high neck of her sweater now proved otherwise. Clarke only wished she could tuck her hair back and tease her about her ears turning pink.  _ ‘Tell me if you ever need help, yeah? It’s just me and Fish over here,’  _ the brunette jerked a thumb to her house,  _ ‘I don’t mind, honestly.’ _

Clarke nodded, chin dipping,  _ ‘yeah,’ _ she decided, with a smile,  _ ‘okay.’ _

She was certain if she analysed when  _ ‘tell me if you ever need help’  _ had turned to Saturday playdates and Lexa as the second emergency contact at the daycare, the carefully constructed cavern of half-truths and assurances she built their foundation on would collapse and wind them both.

The sunlight was a weak sputtering thing by the time Clarke pulled into the daycare center, misty rain split the light like a prism but it would not be ignored, rooting its way through the greying cloud layer with the determination of Andy begging for dessert. She sat herself in her car for a minute collecting herself, going through her conversation with the teacher,  _ ‘a mild temperature’  _ the woman had assured her. The blonde was a doctor and though peds wasn’t here specialty, a temperature could mean any number of things from teething – which Andy was a little too late for – to measles. 

Abby said much the same. 

“It’s probably a twenty-four hour bug, honey,” her mother assured her over the phone in the middle of a hospital shift. Clarke felt bad for interrupting as she sat in the front seat of her car, watching the rain gather on the windshield. “You won’t know until you see her, did they say anything was going around?” 

_ “Not that I know of, but Octavia’s had kids in with norovirus.”  _ The nurse had sauntered into the break room one day with her nose turned up exclaiming she had a kid puke on her shoes. 

“Well there you go,” Abby hummed with the bedside manner of a doctor, “take her home, get her some fluids and paracetamol, I wouldn’t worry too much.” 

Nodding, Clarke said her goodbye and tucked her phone into her back pocket, ducking inside to be met with pressed-nosed faces against the glass of the door in the entrance way, fingers splayed in sticky handprints. 

“She’s sleeping now,” the teacher told her,  _ ‘tsking’  _ quietly in the doorway of the nap room and Clarke’s bottom lep went out in sympathy for the pink-cheeked three-year-old, laying sideways on her assigned mat in the otherwise empty room. 

“Thanks, Jillian,” she said to the teacher who held the door as she signed Andy out, drowsy, feverish three-year-old in arms, Dora backpack slung off her right arm. She hummed pretty words and gave sweeping kisses to the heated forehead as she buckled the three-year-old into her car seat and gave her a packet of kiddy cookies as much peace offering as distraction. 

But Andy whimpered and nodded off, mousy curls in her eyes before Clarke had pulled out of the parking lot.

* * *

 

Clarke found out quickly when they got home that Andy was trained in the mastery of avoiding thermometers and medication – she didn’t blame her, the children’s Tylenol from the drugstore was garish pink and bubblegum flavoured, but the blonde was at her wits end and tears threatened to crawl up her throat, toxic and bubbling. 

A  _ ‘crash-clatter’  _ sent the pink-topped sippy cup flying. The lid snapped off the plastic rim and watering soaked the carpet of the three-year-olds room. 

_ “Andy!”  _ She scolded in the loud, cruel tone she promised herself she wouldn’t use. “That was naughty!” But the toddler was already stiffening, unbidden, her eyes saucered, lips bird-mouthed and unimpressed as she released a harrowing wail that made Clarke’s heart thunder. She rubbed the headache brewing where it had earlier in the day. 

The house was steeped in darkness now, save the nightlight and the lamplight from Clarke’s room across the hall seeping in through the open door and Clarke dragged her hands through her loose hair, skin cool under the flimsy fabric of her sleepwear. There was a panel heater on the opposite wall but she had turned it off when she tried to put Andy down to keep the temperature low – a failed effort – and the hairs on her arm were raising against the cold.

She groped for the time on her phone, “two-oh-eight,” she sighed, and leant back over the one open side of the modified crib to rake the girl’s sweaty bangs from her forehead. Her knees ached on the floor, she had a shift in five hours and dark bruises under her eyes. Andy’s temperature was wreaking a cruel kind of havoc and and Clarke had stripped the child down to her pull-up and tied her hair loosely with the hairband clinging to her wrist but her forehead refused to cool. 

Theory, Clarke was discovering, went down the plughole quickly when it came to reality. 

“Andy,” she breathed through her nose and carded her hair between her fingers to refasten it, “baby,” please. Can you try to sleep.” 

“No.” 

It was decisive. 

“For Mommy,” she whispered, “please?” 

The three-year-old screeched an awful sound, clogged with mucus and gunk that made the doctor think it wasn’t a simple stomach bug. She kicked her feet against the wall in retaliation to Clarke trying to move her back to the center of the mattress where she swum in sheet and kicked-back comforters. The blonde went to catch the offending feet at which Andy scrunched her face in distress.    
“Stop,” she whined.    
“Andy!” 

“Stop!”

Clarke snapped. 

_ “Fine!” _

Her body was vibrating. Everything within her shaking with the unadulterated exhaustion of building her dam, brick and mortar, against tears. She wanted to cry. She wanted to Andy to sleep. But patience waned thin at two o’clock in the morning so she snatched her phone from the floor and slammed the door on her way out into the hallway, feeling the rattle of the hinges and the way it shook her foundations to dust, listening to the retaliatory wailings on the other side of the door, feet pounding dull thuds into her skull where she felt like it would crack. 

She couldn’t do this. 

How  _ fucking _ foolish had she been to take on the responsibility of a three-year-old on her own, in a city she didn’t know, in a job she was new to? She wasn’t good at this, she could barely get dinner on the table and guilt corroded the cavity of her chest like hot acid, she gagged on a sob as Andy wailed.

_ “Mommy.” _

Clarke swallowed.

_ “Mommy!” _

She pressed fists into her eyes until her head spun and she could see stars, then clasped her phone to her chest, pressing with shaking fingers and tear-blurry vision, hoping. Her breath trapped itself inside her chest like a lead balloon.

_ “‘ello?” _

“Lexa?”

“Clarke?” the brunette’s voice was low, raspy like it was covered in the thin film of sleep and she pictured her neighbour sitting up in bed, pianist fingers sifting through bedside table clutter for the round shape of her clock. The thought alone was like a strange kind of cooling balm but then Andy screeched again and it sent her spiralling, desperation seizing her chest like her heart wanted to escape.

“I – I can get her to sleep. She’s – she’s hot – she’s got a temperature I think, but I can’t give her any more meds and she won’t sleep, she won’t drink anything, I’ve tried – oh god, I don’t know what to do.”

_ “Clarke –” _

“– I can’t do this. I have a shift in four hours and she isn’t sleeping, I can’t –”

_ “Clarke, who? Andy?” _

“Yes, I –”

_ “Do you know what her temperature is?” _

“She won’t let me take it, I can’t take it –”

_ “That’s okay, Clarke,”  _ the blonde leant her head against the hard panel of the bedroom door and wiped her dripping nose on her wrist.  _ “I can be over in two minutes if that suits?”  _ Clarke nodded, then swallowed, “okay,” she whispered, hoarse, choking on the effects of her own exhaustion and guilty desperation, “thank you.”

Lexa was there a in a minute in a half in rolled ankle jeans and yesterdays creased university tee – UC Berkeley Clarke noticed with a sloping smile – and her hair in a haphazard ponytail that had frizz curling at her hairline. 

They were in the emergency room a half-hour later.

Clarke leant on her knees with the clipboard they had given her, filling out the admittance form with a blue pen and slow fingers so that her writing didn’t shake as she printed  _ ‘guardian’  _ on the thin line of  _ ‘Relationship to Individual’ _ . Andy, left thumb tucked into her mouth, hair in sweaty pigtails, was curled into the sticky vinyl of the waiting room chairs, her head pillowed on Lexa’s jean-clad thigh, asleep – funnily enough it had been the thrum of rain on the windshield that had lulled her into a reluctant sleep and Clarke felt like an overreacting idiot even though her temperature raged and there were dark bruises forming under her eyes. 

The brunette lifted the three-year-old's forehead when a receptionist returned with thin pillow and switched chairs to the one next to Clarke’s, smiling in soft sympathy when the blonde signed her name and walked over to hand the forms back, sitting down to dig the heels of her palms into her eyes.  

“I’m sorry,” she whispered watching colours kaleidoscope on her eyelids, “I’m a doctor, I should be able to handle this –”

“Clarke, no –”

“She just wouldn’t sleep and I – I’ve never been good with kids, I don’t know why I took her in, I’m ridiculous.” She took a hard, ragged breath and relished guiltily into the way it hurt when it caught in her throat, “ _ god _ , this was a mistake, I’m doing everything wrong –”  

“Clarke,” soft hands slid into hers, unbidden, and pulled with little resistance until Clarke was blinking up at the harsh fluorescent light and there was hair curling at her forehead. “You’re doing  _ nothing _ wrong.” Lexa was on her knees now, kneeling in front of her so that she was a little less than eye level with the blonde, tangling their fingers so that their palms were pressed together and Clarke would pull away if her head wasn’t so fuzzy, if she wasn’t sleep deprived, if guilt didn’t cling to her bones like spider webs to the tree roots Andy would root around in at the park. She in turn, clung to Lexa like a child might its blanket, simultaneously her constant and her wildcard.

“You’re doing a good thing. Andy loves you.”

Clarke shook her head, mouth tilting into a smile, this close she could see the freckle on Lexa’s top lip and the proud line of her cheekbones. “She loves  _ you _ ,”

“She loves  _ Fish _ ,” Lexa corrected and Clarke giggled wetly. Lexa’s breath danced over her cheeks and the tears that dried there.

“Griffin?” The nurse on call asked form behind the desk, eyes flicking briefly through the forms on the clipboard. Lexa squeezed Clarke’s hand, “go clean up, I’ll take her in.” She rose as Clarke nodded and scooped Andy into her arms gently as to not jostle her and Clarke wiped her hands on her jeans, watching the nurse escort them down the hall before asking the receptionist for directions to the restrooms where she washed her hands and used a square of toilet paper to blow her nose. Her eyes were dark and her hair was loose and there was dinner on the collar of her shirt. She splashed warm water on her face and returned to the waiting room, sneaking down the hall to the room she knew the nurse ushered Lexa and Andy into, slipping through the half-open door with her hand in her hair, making sure it fell right. 

“Hi,” she sat down, “sorry.”

“That’s fine,” the doctor was young, only a little older than her, clothes crisp, and alert. “Clarke your wife was telling me you picked Andy up from preschool early today, did they tell you if they took her temperature then? Do you know what it was?”

Clarke stiffened with a violent kind of embarrassment, redness burning on her cheeks as she rushed to correct the woman, “oh,” she swallowed, flapping an inarticulate hand, meeting Lexa’s eyes – wide with the same kind of quiet horror – “no, we’re –” she shook her head, “we’re not together.”

“Oh.” The doctor looked between them, too close in awkwardly placed chairs, Andy, flushed and red, waving a plastic wrapped sucker from the desk, cradled between Lexa’s knees. She giggled conspiratorially. “I just assumed,” the woman re-considered the forms, “I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” Clarke waved the awkwardness – unsuccessfully – away she tucked her hands between her cross legs and recalled the original question. “They didn’t tell me her temperature, I’m sorry, and she wouldn’t let me take it later.”

“Okay,” the doctor nodded, “well it’s 102.2° now.” She re-checked her notes, chewing her lip as she considered then looked back up at them. “It looks like influenza, which means, if managed correctly, she’ll be fine in a week, give or take.” The pen clicked. Clarke fiddled with the join on her jeans, she could see Lexa shifting out of the corner of her eyes. “Just make sure she stays hydrated, keep her comfortable and paracetamol every four to five hours if the fever persists. I’d recommend keeping her home for the rest of the week, mostly for her own fatigue, if nothing else, but she seems strong, she’ll get past it with no problem, I’m sure.”

The appointment over, they said their thank yous. 

Clarke leant over to take Andy from Lexa and their fingers brushed, the touch prickling like fire on her wrist. She studiously avoided the brunette’s eyes as she shifted Andy further on her hip, feeling the three-year-old yanking on the collar of her shirt.  _ “Andy,” _ she whispered, taking the girls hand in her own before any skin was shown. 

Reddening, Lexa cleared her throat.

* * *

 

It was raining when they got home. 

Lexa stood in the doorway, hip against the frame, watching the way it poured off the roof via the gutter and how soft Clarke looked in the yellow-white light of Andy’s night light. The blonde combed Andy’s hair back from her forehead and brown eyes blinked up at her, sleepy and docile. “Gimme a kiss,” she requested softly, Andy puckered her lips and kissed Clarke, full of saliva and uncoordinated ability but Clarke grinned. “Goodnight, Andy.”

“Nigh-nigh.”

“I love you.”

“I lo’ you.”

Standing with an effort-filled huff, Clarke crossed the room, padding softly in miss-matching socks – laundry day got putt of this week – to flick the switch on the monitor and stand by Lexa, watching the head of unruly curls shift among cotton sheets.

“Momma?”

She frowned at the unfamiliar title, Andy didn’t call her that. “Yes?”

“No,” Andy sat up, brow pressed,  _ “Momma.”  _ Her hands rose, little fingers stretching and flexing, an expectant grabby motion in Lexa’s direction and the brunette stiffened in shock. “Kisses Momma,” Andy demanded like she would ask for juice, like it was the silliest thing in the world.

Verdant eyes turned to her, wavering in want for permission. It was endearing but their foundations were already collapsing and the pretence of whatever charade they had been playing with themselves, with Andy, wasn’t there anymore. Clarke felt like she was floundering without a ground for her feet but then Lexa crossed the room and Andy flung her little arms around her neck, fingers curling together in a bruising hold, kisses were mandatory, and an unimaginable kind of fondness seized her chest, an unabashed need to take Lexa by the sleeves and cling to her.

“Nigh-nigh, Momma,” Andy sung, snuggling herself into her mattress.

Clarke waited until the baby was still, and the door was pulled to, and the air was stagnant in the corridor around them, the panel heater humming away on the wall, before she pressed herself into the brunette, unbidden. “I love you,” she implored, fingers wound in her the brunette’s collar, chests flush, lips cold and tongues hot, the rush in her ears beating the common sense out of her head. 


	2. Chapter 2

She woke to cotton sheets and a warmth on her chest, which for once was not the weight of pull-up clad toddler curling spit sticky fingers into her hair. This warmth was different, heavier than a three-year-old. It was laced with implications and she squeezed her eyes tighter at the blind graze of curled fingers against her bare ribs, replaying her night in her mind's eye. 

Lexa. 

The kiss. 

How the brunette’s features shifted – brows raising, lashes fluttering – under the feather-light weight of Clarke’s lips, fingers steadying her elbows. 

Their mirrored steps, the easy shuffle down the hall, soft breaths and reverent hands in the way shirts were pulled from bodies and pants were pushed down legs. If there wasn’t a flu-ridden toddler down the hall, she would proclaim last night was the best of her life, the way Lexa hesitated when their lips met, then later, with her hands fisting in the hem of Clarke’s tee, earnest and asking, sat warm in her stomach like the comfort of a hot drink. 

But there was – Andy fussed on the monitor which she eyed until it feel silent – and she truly didn’t know what to feel. Whether her bed mate would be thinking as wistfully as her when she woke up. 

Lexa breathed in her sleep, an airy sound in her chest and Clarke slipped out of bed, swinging her feet to the floor where they curled against the cold. She pulled on the discarded underwear at the foot of her bed, and her too-big NYU sweater with its curling hem and fraying strings, tucking her palms into the rolled sleeves. The familiar weight of it balanced her – enough to clasp the plastic monitor in her palm and pull the door to on Lexa’s sleeping form – on her stomach, hair fanned out in tendrils over Clarke’s spare pillow, fingers stroking the blonde’s side of the bed where her warmth lingered in the mattress. 

Andy was on her back when Clarke slipped through her daughters door. There was a rattle in her chest when she breathed – Clarke counted the puffs of breath until she was sure they were regular and unlabored – but apart from the flush clinging to her cheeks, she didn't look distressed. 

The blonde readjusted her into the middle of her mattress and pressed a kiss to where her hair frizzed in soft baby curls where her hairline met her forehead, bangs parted badly by sleep. 

She would call Abby later, she decided, her mother had texted her asking after Andy but it had been lost to the chaos of the evening and left guiltily without a reply. She added the task to her carefully curated list of actions for the day – alongside a pharmacy trip for more paracetamol and addressing the naked brunette in her bed. 

(And though the thought should have phased her, she didn’t think she had an ounce of panic left to give. A gentle serenity, as welcome as a warm breeze in the summer, had taken its place. It was a serenity she didn’t know what to do with, but serenity nevertheless). 

She pulled the door, toeing a left of a pair of kiddy sneakers into the crack to prop it open should the monitor fail her and padded down the hallway, bunching her fists in the sleeves of her sweater and watching the way the rainwater dripped from the gutter through the windows whose blinds she hadn’t shut the night before. 

There was an intimacy Clarke liked to her morning routine. The easiness of _ ‘check the thermostat, turn on the espresso machine, slide toast into the toaster, find Andy’s oatmeal in the back of the pantry’  _ soothed the frenzied ache of her lack of control at the hospital, and the half-hour pocket of early-morning stillness was something she craved as much as she did the gurgle of the espresso machine turning on. 

She hooked two mugs from the miscellaneous rack onto her fingers and slid one under the spout of the machine, watching it fill and froth. The milk came out of the fridge, she nudged the first mug out of the way and let the machine fill the second one. 

“Morning.” 

She slid a ceramic, paint-splashed mug – a mother’s day present from Andy’s daycare, given two months after she signed the papers that she was wholly ill-prepared and undeserving of – across the bench to the voice’s tentative owner. 

“Morning.” 

Lexa cradled the beverage in her palms with sleep-mussed hair, blinking blindly behind her reading glasses. 

Lexa cradled the beverage in her palms with sleep-mussed hair, blinking blindly behind her reading glasses. She had her jeans on, rolled at the ankle, creased where they were discarded on Clarke’s bedroom floor and her UC Berkeley tee hanging off of her frame. Navy fabric, yellow letter, yellow crest. It looked better on the floor, Clarke hummed to herself, then dismissed the lewd thought immediately. 

“So.” 

Like a startled deer, Lexa looked up. “So.”    
“We should probably talk. About last night.” 

Lexa nodded. Separated by the stone-topped expanse of the kitchen island, the brunette wouldn’t look at Clarke, verdant eyes finding refuge in the froth on her coffee – milk, no sugar, the way the brunette liked – and the blonde frowned, anxiety sloshing in her chest. “I’m sorry,” she admitted, hot embarrassment burning in her cheeks as she tried to quell the thought of Lexa regretting what they did. “I should have asked, I never meant to make you uncomfortable.” 

“No!” Huffing, Lexa tempered herself, “no,” she swallowed. “That’s not – I liked it,” she shrugged, smoothing her free hand over the back of her neck. Clarke watched her evasive behaviour and decided they were both catastrophic disasters, skirting each other like they were afraid to be broken despite the effortlessness of the night before. It had been easier before – with the pretence of helping with Andy – but Clarke wasn’t good at pretending, her mother insisted she was too overtly emotional for games from a young age and, she decided, if they hadn’t needed this careful handling last night, they didn’t need it now.

She watched Lexa wet her lips and meet her eyes. “It takes two, Clarke.” 

“It does.” 

It was a beautiful dichotomy; the difference between the woman who drove them to the emergency room at two a.m., who crouched on the linoleum floor with Clarke’s hands in hers and assuring her the world wasn’t ending, and the flushed-faced girl cringing across from her. She took refuge in the murky depths of her coffee like a schoolgirl being confronted by her crush and Clarke briefly wondered how many times Lexa had had to navigate that less-than-comfortable morning after. She hadn’t once, in the months she had known the brunette, seen an unknown someone doing the walk of shame down the short, slope of their shared driveway. 

(Not that she checked, she told herself, because she didn’t. But she couldn’t help but follow the path of her straying mind). 

“I’m sorry,” Lexa cocked her head apologetically, her cheeks burned brilliantly red, “I’m making this awkward aren’t I?” 

“No,” Clarke assured her grinning, then softly: “I like it.” 

When the monitor crackled with sleep-slurred calls of  _ ‘Mommy’  _ a half-hour later, they were sat at the island, feet hooked around the rungs of the stools to nurse lukewarm drinks and agreeing that this was a natural progression.    
“Oh,” Clarke listened to Andy fuss, thumbing the monitor off, “that’s the monster.” 

Lexa tried to stand but the blonde held her hand out, “stay,” she begged. “If you don’t have work, that is?” She had called herself in yesterday in the car on the way home from the emergency room, phone to her ear, watching Lexa’s outline as she drove in the glow of the street lights more than she listened to her supervisor hope her three-year-old felt better. Lexa looked ethereal against the rain-stained windows, Clarke would have kissed her then if the road wasn’t wet. “I can’t offer a salary but I  _ can _ give you french toast sticks and Nick Junior.” 

“I called in when I woke up,” Lexa admitted bashfully, and when she nodded Clarke felt herself falling uncontrollably, incontrovertibly, in love, “french toast sounds lovely.” 

* * *

 

Clarke decided anyone who didn’t consider keeping syrup sticky hands off furnishings a workout, clearly wasn’t a parent. Because Andy woke up ruddy cheeked and temperamental but with enough of an appetite for batter slathered fried bread, and if the sight of Lexa dipping toast sticks into a Peter Rabbit bowl of syrup didn’t wasn’t warming her heart, she would have been despairing for her discolouring sofa. 

But the brunettes denim-clad legs were folded to cradle Andy in her lap as  _ ‘Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated’ _ painted coloured outlines on their faces, the gang unmasking another clueless villain so she didn’t. 

“It was Professor Pericles all along,” Lexa faux-gasped, hand over her mouth.

Eyes wide, Andy mimicked her, “silly P’fessor Per’cles.” She collapsed into giggles when Lexa dug long fingers under her ribs with malicious intent, then into long, rattling breaths when she overexerted herself, pressing her face into the brunette’s neck, sticky fingers winding around her hair. Clarke cringed from the kitchen, but Lexa clucked gently, carding long fingers up the little back to sooth discomfort out of quaking shoulder blades. 

Hip against the bench in the kitchen with a dirty dish towel slung in her hands, Clarke watched them, letting quant domesticity even off the rough edges of herself left from long shifts and irritable patients. The dishwasher was on and the pan was draining on the side board. She dropped the towel into the wicker basket inside the pantry door and rubbed her wet palms on the sweats she had ducked out of the room to pull on whist Andy was entertained. 

“Come wash up you two.” 

“But Mommy,” Andy insisted. “Scoob Doo.” For a three-year-old, Clarke was worried with the grasp – or lack thereof – that Andy had over speaking. She wasn’t pronouncing words like the other children Clarke saw when she picked her up from daycare, and though the doctor advised her to correct Andy when necessary, Clarke didn’t like to push for for fear of her talking at all. 

(The parents at daycare like to tell horror stories about how one of their children had stopped pointing to the ducklings at the park after they third time they had to tell them there was an  _ ‘l’  _ between the  _ ‘k’  _ and the  _ ‘i’ _ and Clarke was neurotic enough. She wished they had enough self-esteem to be able to live off things other than other peoples pitfalls). 

“Yeah, Clarke,” Lexa parroted, “ _ ‘Scoob Doo’ _ .” Andy was off her lap now, sprawling dramatically on the floor and Lexa shifted onto her knees, combing a hand through syrup fused curls. There was a challenge in the smirk in the left corner of her lips but Clarke held firm. “No,” she clapped her hands like she was scattering animals, “c’mon, enough TV time. Eleven-thirty is too late to be in pyjamas,” she picked at the syrupy front of Andy’s pyjama shirt, “and you need a bath.” 

“She’s sick, Clarke, let her have a jammy day.” 

“I’m sick Mommy,” Andy repeated. 

Clarke cursed the smug grin on Lexa’s face, the slight cant of her chin and purse of her lips behind Andy as the three-year-old looked at Clarke a dip in her brows she knew Clarke wasn’t immune to. Spotting the Tylenol on the bench in dire need of backup, she picked it up and shook the half-empty bottle. “Bath or medicine,” she wagered wickedly, and by the way brown eyes blinked at her, sticky lips pursing in an imitation of Lexa’s, Clarke knew she had found her leverage. 

“Bath,” Andy eyed her with scepticism, little arms folded against her chest in the way that made her shoulders bunch around her ears. “With Lexa, too.” 

She couldn’t say the request shocked her, but she sought Lexa out, watching the brunette wiggle her fingers where they were buried in the pockets of her jeans. Andy hadn’t called Lexa  _ ‘Momma’  _ again since her half-asleep demands in the early hours of the morning and she didn’t know where any of them stood in that regard so she took cues from Lexa who hitched her thumb in the direction of next door, admitting quietly: “I might go and shower.” She picked at her tee, “and feed Fish.” 

Clarke nodded in quiet understanding, filing the point away for later, avoiding sticky fingers as she caught a coughing Andy around the waist and slung her onto her hip, feeling her socked feet dangling. “Lexa has to go, baby,” she commiserated with a pouting Andy, fixing her bangs with her fingers to quell the anxious tingle taking route in beneath her skin like low-voltage shocks. It was the last thing should she have been feeling after a night spent together. But there was something beautifully fragile and wonderfully domestic about her and Lexa that she wanted to take care of – nurture like she did the first plant she was ever allowed to keep on her bedroom windowsill at age eight. 

“But she’ll be back later?” 

It wasn’t a question. Clarke raised her brow in ill-concealed challenge and Lexa nodded freely, a smile buried deep in the line of her lips. “Whenever you need me.” 

“Good,” Clarke decided. “Because I was thinking of a Scooby Doo marathon.” 

“An’ poppy the corn!” Andy gasped. 

“If you drink water,” Clarke wagered. 

When Andy agreed  _ ‘yes’  _ she would drink water, Lexa smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it.” 

She saw Lexa out with Andy on her hip, then carted the three-year-old into the bathroom before she caught on enough to put up a fight neither of them had the energy for, maneuvering limbs through syrupy pyjamas which landed on the tiles. She kicked them aside and dipped Andy into the bath by hands under her armpits, cupping her palms to scoop soapy water over her body, the water frothing with the strawberry bubble bath Clarke had at hand for difficult bathtimes. 

“Arms up,” she hummed. Andy shoved her hands in the air, fingers splayed, then pulled her legs to her chest, resting her ear on her knees as Clarke moved to freeing syrup from her hair, sucking on her third and fourth fingers in the way Clarke didn’t have the heart to reprimand. She was well aware of the scornful looks she received at daycare for it, from mothers who picked their children up in yoga pants and Nike’s, pulling their shaded sunglasses down their noses at the sight of a scrubbed Clarke scooping a finger-sucking Andy off the floor and twittering about their personal business. A teary call to her mother after a hard day personally and professionally had resolved that those women needed to get a life. 

“An?” With false nonchalance she turned Andy’s head in front of her to squeeze excess sudsy water out of water darkened hair, curling softly as it tried to dry. Andy hummed through the gaps in her fingers. “Why did you call Lexa  _ ‘Momma’?”  _

She could see the confusion in the pensive little dip of the brow, the strengthened suck on fingertips between pursed lips. “‘Cause she is,” Andy answered with an innocence that made her heart ache, all caramel eyes and shivering chin. “Is she?” 

Clarke parted her lips, chest filling with anxiety as fluid as the bathwater. Single parents got an inherently bad wrap, Clarke knew – families were judgemental in upstate New York and Abby was under the weight of it constantly when Jake died – but she hadn’t understood it fully until now. The constant self-doubt that took a bigger toll than the most gruelling hospital shift. 

“If you want her to be.” She scraped the bubbles off of Andy’s head with a wet palm, watching her face contorted with thought. 

“Yes.” 

Clarke nodded. 

“Bu’ you too.” 

“Okay.” 

* * *

 

Fish was waiting for her when Lexa pushed her key into the latch. His head was on the bottom step, furry body splayed out over the wood, and closing the door behind her, she called to him lightly and watched his ears perk, half-barking. She eased herself down to the step, pulling the puppy into her lap, all silky fur and cold nose in the palm of her hand.

“She told me she loves me,” she pressed the words into the soft of his head, and saying them aloud again affirmed the swirling feeling in her chest that had been there since last night – since she traced the way to Clarke’s room with tentative hands and every fibre of her body singing, like a dream. She could still feel the warmth of unfamiliar sheets on her when she woke up, was still marvelling at the way she didn’t feel cold or regretful stretching against them because she could hear Clarke in the kitchen and the pat-pat of rain against the windows. When they were young, she remembered laying on the sunken mattress of Anya’s bed in the room that they shared, upside down, feet on the wall talking about love – it was the age of boyfriends and seventh grade dances, and Lexa wasn’t sure where she fit – but Anya would say that she would know when it felt  _ ‘right’.  _

She heaved herself off the step when Fish made a rough noise in his throat that signalled he was hungry, uring them both upstairs to where she poured the food into his bowl, then promised she would be back before heading down the hall, easing off shoes and pulling off layers. The shower stream was hot against her skin, water slipping easily between sleep mussed locks as she pressed them back against her scalp, breath steadily with her eyes closed, considering what exactly  _ ‘right’  _ meant. 

The word had been light when Anya said it; the lightest and airiest Lexa had ever heard the girl speak. All hope and naivety and Lexa was almost sure she was talking from experience but she couldn’t be certain because her own aversion to putting down roots clutched at her chest like an angry fist. 

(Foster homes weren’t good for permanency). 

It was dizzying and mind-numbing now because the warmth and security of the house next door had tucked itself into her heart, next to Andy’s toddler-slurred  _ ‘Momma’  _ and the ache of Costia nosing Fish’s fur as she said goodbye. Lexa had told Fish he was her one and only that night with a harsh, slated laugh and tears in the corners of her eyes because her girlfriends things were in boxes stamped with the postmark of a different state and just thinking hurt. 

Recently, Lexa thought, she was becoming a dirty, awful liar in that regard. 

* * *

 

“It’s Deputy Buckner! I told you two,” Clarke squealed, “it was Deputy Buckner!” 

“No one doubted it was Deputy Buckner, Clarke.” 

“Yes, you did! You thought it was the tall man!” 

“Well I wouldn’t have refuted you if I knew how important it was.” 

Clarke folded her arms over her chest, jaw dropped in faux-outrage as Lexa laughed and readjusted the heavy-knit throw around their feet that had been kicked up in the excitement. “The Scooby gang has recently become a big part of my life,” the blonde informed shortly, pout turning the corners of her lips down. 

Lexa guffawed. “Really, Fred Jones?” 

Fish yipped, pulling his furry head out of the brunette’s lap to protest at how his owner and stopped scratching his ears. 

“Really,” Clarke insisted, grinning, “and I’m I’m Fred then you’re Daphne.” 

The way Lexa gaped at the implications was too endearing. Clarke watched the redness in her cheeks flush down the column of her neck, fingers running along the seam of the blanket and she ribbed her gently, tongue through her teeth. 

“Saggy!” Andy threw up her arms between them, not unlike Fish in her demand to be noticed. 

_ “Sh,” _ Clarke corrected with a giggle on her tongue. “Sh-aggy.” 

Andy pursed her lips. “ _ Sh _ -aggy,” she grinned, jabbing a thumb at her chest, “I’m Shaggy!” 

“Is Fish your Scooby?” 

Eyes – still glassy and a little red – lighting, Andy scrambled to give Fish loves, laying her head on his neck and fisting her fingers in his fur. “Scoob!” she squealed, little voice tremouring. 

She had the weight of both toddler and dog on her lap but Clarke’s heart sung, a sweet lofty tune that seeped through her veins like honey and turned bad things to good. The hospital had given her leave for the next three days, Lexa confirmed she would be available to help be needed and she didn't think she had  ever felt as wholly at peace as she did in this speck of a moment, popcorn in her lap, a child, a dog, Lexa tentatively hers. She sighed contentedly, stroking at the small expanse of Lexa’s wrist under her fingers. 

“Clarke.” 

Clarke prised her eyes off of Andy and Fish. “Yes.” 

The way Lexa caught her lips was soft, lashes fluttering, head tilted up to catch the downward angle of Clarke’s mouth, fingers winding themselves in the strings of her sweater. She chased Clarke when, surprised, the doctor reflexively went to pull back, laughing into her mouth at the squeak she let out before sinking into the soft press of fingers against her sternum. They fell into the soft slide of lips and palms against fabric, hands curling around hair at the nape of necks and when Lexa pulled away Clarke was pink and breathless and Andy was watching them with pursed lips and big eyes. She reached out two splayed hands to run fingers down either one of their faces, the ridges of their cheekbones and hollows of their cheeks, tilting her head too and fro like she was figuring something out, but Lexa caught her hands, blowing a raspberry into her palm that earnt her melodic giggles. 

_ “Momma!”  _ she squealed gasping, “silly Momma,” and this time Lexa didn’t hesitate to bundle the mousy haired girl into the hollow of her arms, looking at Clarke over her shoulder with nothing short of insurmountable love. 

_ ‘Thank you’ _ Clarke mouthed. 

Lexa buried her nose in Andy’s hair and nodded.  _ ‘You’re welcome.’  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know where I'm going with this, I'll find a general direction I want to go in eventually but in the mean time come talk to me on [tumblr](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/). This is so cute and sappy to write I love it. Anyway, thanks for reading! Comments and kudos appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a small announcement before we get into this chapter that's five months overdue. I have re-written the first two chapters of this because I got to a place where I realised I have to have some semblance of a plot to carry on. In both chapters there are a couple of sections that I have added in completely so it would pay to go back and have a skim but if you don't want to it's nothing serious.

Domestic was one thing Lexa swore she would never be.

Like an old cat lady, she had resigned herself to her one-bedroom house, with her dog and her job that was mediocre at best but fulfilling nevertheless – the prospects of a research associate weren’t the best in the world but the dusty stacks of Washington University provided more permanency that her entire childhood combined. It was safe. Lexa liked safe.

It hadn’t crossed her mind that two bedrooms, a three-year-old and Clarke could be too.

(She liked the fact that it was).

_“And you have her backpack? It’s by the door?”_

“Yes.”

_“What about a change of clothes? She likes getting into the sandbox.”_

“In the backpack.”

_“Her water bottle?”_

Lexa patted the bench down for the pink water bottle, phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear, “in my hand,” she assured her girlfriend.

_“And you’ll get the day care centre to call me if they need anything.”_

“Yes.” Lexa tucked the drink bottle into the mesh on the side of the backpack and returned to the dining room where Andy sat propped up on a cushion on one of the dining room chairs, stirring her bowl of soggy fruit loops and milk. It had been a hefty effort to get her up this morning after Clarke had left at four for an odd shift, and Lexa found out that a kid going limp in your arms is arguably the most immovable force since solid steel. But she liked to think she had managed. Andy was awake and dressed and adequately fed. Fish too, thought he looked at her with something akin to betrayal when she told him she would feed him after she fixed Andy her food and went to sulk in the corner after his morning cuddles were deferred to a later time. All in all, Lexa would high five herself if the action didn’t seem so absolutely ridiculous.  “Dee,” she said instead pulling the phone from her ear, “tell Mommy she needs to stop worrying.”

“Mommy, stop worry,” Andy munched into the phone, then returned her plastic spoon to her bowl to stir again.

Lexa grinned. “You heard it here first,” she said gleefully. “I’ll be fine. It’s not the first time I’ve done the day care run.”

 _“I know, I know,”_ Clarke groaned, chided. _“But it’s the first time like this.”_

Lexa rolled her eyes. _‘Like this.’_ As the now official unofficial parent figure. “I’ll see you tonight,” she told Clarke, “happy Valentine’s Eve.”

She could hear the distracted chuckle on the other end of the line.

_“Happy Valentine’s Day-Eve, baby.”_

Lexa bit her smile as she ended the call and tucked the device into her pocket. It had been four weeks since the emergency room, the kiss. But every time she earnt the little terms of endearment that fell from Clarke’s lips as easily as smiles did, she felt filled in a way she didn’t think she’d felt before. Like she was overflowing with champagne and dizzy with the bubbles. It was a lot to allow herself after almost a year of denying herself that stupid, temperamental love existed.

(A lot to allow herself after the way Costia looked at her when she said goodbye).

“Dee, c’mon,” she called, “finish up, we have to go soon. Where’re your rain boots?”

“Door,” the little girl replied diligently, she pushed her bowl back a moment later while Lexa went to retrieve the yellow rain boots perched upside down on the rack by at the top of the stairs, and came back to Andy on her tiptoes sliding her dishes onto the bench.

“Oh here,” she stacked the cutlery and bowl in the dishwasher, “go put your shoes on.”  

They didn’t have anything set in stone yet, but Lexa was slowly finding her niche. More than being just convenient babysitter and part-time support, day care drop offs and bath time routines required technique that she was learning in her own way while splitting the week between her house and the house next door. And if she was worried about Andy noticing her inelegant installation into the household the morning after the emergency room, she shouldn’t have been. Because the three-year-old queried her absences rather than her presence and even then, Lexa’s favourite new tradition was her nightly call to Clarke’s phone when she wasn’t there and Andy’s sloppy “g’night” on the other end.

“Did you know it’s Val’tine Day tomorrow?” Andy asked when she was safely installed in her car seat. Lexa adjusted the rear vision mirror and messed with the key.

“Yes, baby. Do you like Valentine’s Day?” She enunciated clearly but not obnoxiously as per Clarkes orders. There had been consultations with paediatricians in the break room and the blonde had concluded if she could hear the words being said properly, eventually, Andy would catch on. They wouldn’t push her.

Andy nodded. “Miss Sarah says we makin’ cards.”

“Who are you making your card for?”

“You ‘n Mommy,” the little voice said softly and Lexa felt more of herself being lost to this thing with her eyes and her perfect bath time curls. “Who’re you makin’ a card for? Make one for Mommy?”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’ll have time to make one, baby,” Lexa answered, distracted as she indicated and pulled out onto the street. When she looked up Andy was pouting at her in the rear view.

“But you gettin’ Mommy a card.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a statement Lexa felt in her bones.

“Yeah Dee,” she nodded, “I’m getting Mommy a card.”

* * *

“Why are you so smug?” Clarke accused as she looked up from her phone, hip against the grainy countertop of the breakroom as she stirred her coffee. It was the filtered kind,left to brew too long at six a.m. so that it sat sludge like thick in her mug and tasted like motor oil – the doctors’ crack, they joked about at the hospital.

“Are you planning a wedding yet?”

Clarke groaned. “Don’t start.”

Octavia grinned, “has she moved in?”

“It’s been a month she barely has a shelf in the bathroom!”

The nurse, hair in a haphazard top knot and scrubs worse for wear from her shift, nodded sagely into her steaming coffee. “Give it time.”

Laying her phone down on the counter, Clarke tucked her drink into her palm and turned to lay into her friend, stopping when a navy-scrubbed nurse entered the breakroom. Octavia’s eyes tracked him over the rim of her goodwill scavenged mug.

“Morning girls.”

Octavia smiled politely, “Collins.”

“Finn,” Clarke rolled her eyes at the brunette who cocked a brow in a way she didn’t like, and returned to her motor-oil. He was charming, she guessed, in that all-American college boy way with his unkempt hair and sweet personality she equated more to little brother than potential suitor. New at the hospital, he stuck close to her on rotation and smiled like he craved the attention. Quietly, Clarke cringed when she had seen her shifts for the week, if only because maintaining polite conversation with the nurse was more mentally draining performing surgery.

“Busy day today,” Finn commented brightly as he scavenged for a mug in the cabinet, filling it with liquid from the jug with rivulets of condensation down its sides.

“It’s Winter,” Octavia grouches from her table, “It’s always busy. There’s always some idiot sliding on frozen ice, or needing a transplant,” she added the last bit with a dark grin, sipping from her mug and Clarke shot her a ‘cut it out look’ to a reply of a shit eating grin. Finn, puttering with his coffee, remains oblivious.

“I heard the crash victim from last night is stable,” he says as he turns to face the room. “His family are flying in from Chicago tonight, they’re moving him up to the ward.”

“Where’d you hear that from?”

“Jackson told me, I saw him on my way down.”

Clarke took a gulp of coffee and locked eyes with Octavia. “Well then, that’s my cue.” She tipped the rest of the cooling liquid into the sink and set the mug on the side. “I better go up and make sure everything’s ready, I’ll see you O.”

“Clarke, wait.”

Finn caught her and guided them out into the corridor, rubbing the back of his neck where his uncropped hair met the neckline of his scrubs, and she tried not to burst into middle school giggles at her friend’s face through the window of the break room door. “Octavia says you’re not coming to drinks tomorrow.”

“My kid’s day care has a thing,” Clarke admitted because it seemed like less of a social discomfort than reminding him that, no, she wasn’t going to singles drinks on Valentine’s Day because she wasn’t in fact single. Finn nodded and dipped a hand into his pocket.

“I thought I’d give this to you now, then.”

The envelope he offered her was sleek and red, with ‘CLARKE’ printed in neat capitals and she took it, turning it in her hands and largely unsure what to say. It felt cutesy, like the elementary school Valentines her and Raven would colour at opposite desks and slip onto the tables of the boys they liked, blushing at the cellophane wrapped bag of candies they would get in return. “Oh,” she hummed, the awkwardness of the situation settling into her bones. “Finn, that’s too sweet. You didn’t need to.”

“It’s nothing,” the nurse insisted somewhat bashfully, “I wanted to.”

Clarke tried not to pull a face at that. She was clear enough at work about her private life — about Andy and Lexa — to not have people making unwanted advances in her professional one. Or so she thought. She made herself a mental note to ask Lexa in for lunch in the cafeteria the week after next. “Okay,” she nodded in a graceful movement, smile intact as she took the envelope, making sure their fingers didn’t touch.” Thanks.” She scanned his face for a beat as the silence lingered. “Listen, Finn, I better go.”

“No, yeah. Fine. Of course. I’ll see you.”

“I — yeah.”

Clarke turned to catch the elevator, leaving Finn, puppy-like and gathering himself on the scratched lino of the hospital flooring. She slipped the envelope into the pocket of her scrubs where it stayed until noon when she tore the red paper in the locker room to get to the cheesy Hallmark card inside, skimming her way along the pre-printed Valentine’s message and Finn’s name signed near the bottom with a doodle of a heart. And forgot it again until she was juggling her child, backpack and cellphone later that night as she corralled Andy through the door and upstairs.

“‘N then, Megan – Mommy, you listening?”

Flustered, Clarke offloaded Andy’s day care bag on the dining room table, watching the contents spill from the open zipper and vowing to deal with it later. “Yes,” she promised, adjusting the phone at her ear, “Mommy’s listening. I’m just trying to get things organised baby, can you give me three minutes?” She watched her three-year-old nod and trot off to the living room where Clarke turned the TV on and returned to her neglected call.

“Yes, I know I just ordered another key last month…Well we’re not using this one as a spare.” She puttered around the kitchen, shucking her clothes off. Bending down to give Fish love as he nuzzled between her legs, soft golden fur and wet nose against the inside of her palm. She promised him cuddles after dinner and toed her shoes off, switching hands through the sleeves of her coat which she put on the back of a dining room chair. “Yes.” Change from the pockets went in the bowl on the sideboard, keys too. The creased Hallmark card with the scrap paper on the odds and ends end of the bench. “Yes, I do have my four-digit pin,” it was said like an achievement and she rattled Andy’s birthday off into the receiver, squealing at the pair of arms that found their way around her waist, cold palms resting above her navel where her shirt pulled up. She craned her neck to look at Lexa – wind-blown and still wrapped in her beanie and coat – and let the brunette kiss cold-chapped lips to her cheek as she said her thanks to the security company and ended the call. “Your key’ll be here Monday,” she leant back to sink her body against Lexa’s and press a kiss to her jaw, curling a finger around the stray tendrils of hair where her beanie ended and feeling the brunette keen sweetly. She smelt like the stacks of the University library and air-conditioned air, and her voice was light on the back of Clarke’s neck as she mused, “no escaping me now.”

Andy squealed at the TV from the living room before Clarke could reply and she chuckled. “Or vice versa.” She detangled herself with reluctance from Lexa’s arms and called out to the three-year-old. “Andy baby, come on. Time for a bath, you can tell me all about what Megan did.”

* * *

 “Do you think she’s awake?”

“Sh,” Clarke giggled, clapping a hand over Lexa’s mouth. It was fruitless because their bedroom door was closed – against toddler and dog – and the brunettes voice was a whisper at best. But Clarke felt so safe and euphoric in the moment – moulded against Lexa, bare chest to bare chest – and she wanted to cling to the minutes before their daughter woke and they inevitably had to put clothes on until her nails split.

Holding the sheet over her chest, Lexa checked the monitor. Silent. “She hasn’t slept past eight am. as long as I’ve known you two.”

“Mm,” Clarke stretched against the mattress, satiated. Her mind hummed and her body felt numb. If life could fade away to these four walls and the feeling of Lexa on her skin she would say goodbye to it too happily. “I put _‘Wreck It Ralph’_ on late last night on purpose,” she hummed, “to tire her out.”

“That’s cunning.”

Clarke groaned as she sat up. “Forgive me for wanting to have Valentine’s Day sex for the first time in four years.” She leant over the side of the bed and swung her feet to the group to slide her underwear up her legs and pull her NYU tee over her head, looking back at Lexa trying to do the same. “Honestly, med school was worse than having a kid for my sex life. At least with Andy I have a wing-woman.”

“Oh yeah?”

Clarke bit her lip and sunk forwards on her hands to press a smiling kiss to Lexa’s lips – quick and teasing. “Yeah,” she affirmed.

Lexa played with her hair, “who’re you hoping your wing woman will help you impress?”

“I dunno,” Clarke shrugged, “my neighbour’s pretty cute though.”

“Is she?”

Clarke nodded, then pulled her lips to the side considering, “in the debate-team-nerd kind of way.”

Lexa scoffed and, the magic snapped, swatted Clarke on the arm, going back to pulling her shirt on and adjusting it over her chest in time for footsteps come barrelling across the hall and their little monster come wheeling towards them, messy hair and flushed cheeks. Clarke caught her with outstretched arms and a groan. “Good morning my tiny terror,” she sung, raking flyaway hair from her daughter’s face with both hands and drawing her close, smothering her with kisses until she squirmed away to hide her face in the bunching neckline of her mother’s shirt.

Clarke could bottle mornings like this. The familiarity of baby shampoo on the nape of Andy’s neck and the soft flannel of the three-year-old’s winter pyjamas. But also the new – the warm press of Lexa’s body on hers and the laziness of her limbs. She kept her nose buried in the collar of Andy’s pyjama top for a moment before relented to the way her daughter’s fingers tightened hard in the fabric of her own shirt, small body squirming, and let her go with a faux-pout. Andy giggled, “mornin’ Mommy.”

She tangled her fingers back in Andy’s hair and pressed her close, looking sideways to see Lexa watching them. “Did you say good morning to your Lexa?” They were still in the ‘whatever happens happens’ stage with what Andy was choosing to call Lexa. After the emergency room, she had become ‘Momma’ and ‘Lexa’ in equal standing.

“Mornin’ Momma,” Andy flung herself across the mattress to Lexa’s lap. “It’s Val’tine Day!”

“Is it?” Lexa faked cluelessness and the three-year-old nodded solemnly. “Well,” the brunette whispered conspiratorially, pulling Andy close like a secret, “if you look in the drawer you might find something special that belongs to your Mommy. Do you want to see?” Eager, Andy clambered, all elbows and knees, over Lexa’s legs while Clarke draped herself over Lexa’s side. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” she assured in a whisper in her girlfriend's ear, fingers curling into Lexa’s waist as she leant into her. For the briefest second she thought about Finn and the hopefulness in his smile as he handed the red envelope over. The words sat on the tip of her lips like she wanted to explain the misunderstanding and laugh at it – at the absurdity of the situation and the awkward workplace fumbling – but Lexa was grinning at Andy and something held her back. She curled her fingers further into Lexa and ignored whether it was because it meant nothing or because it meant everything.

“Top drawer, Dee,” Lexa laughed, then to Clarke, “I did,” she said in answer. “I was told so.”

Andy informed them when she found the envelope Lexa and slid into the drawer the night before, having carefully carried it home under her jacket and smuggled it into their bedroom whilst Clarke was bathing her daughter. It was white, with cursive lettering in Lexa’s hand, and a slight bulge that made the blonde squirm in excitement against her girlfriend, fingers still buried in the fabric of her tee. 

She thanked Andy and pulled her into her lap as she slipped the thumb under the flap of the envelope, settling the three-year-old in the cradle of her legs and letting her tug at the bit where the paper was pulled up making sure to keep one hand on Lexa to feel every shift of muscle under her skin. When the card fell free it was a simple one on thick card stock with paper-heart embellishments, plain inside with a handwritten message that Clarke’s cheeks flushed at. Andy _‘ohed’_ over the looped writing while Clarke shook the envelope and a thin silver chain fell out onto the comforter, followed by a delicate infinity charm.

Lexa bit her lip as Clarke toyed with the chain with the ends of her fingers. “It wasn’t expensive,” she assured her hurriedly reading the soft disbelief in Clarke's face. “Not that it was cheap!” Her cheeks flushed violently. “I mean – I didn’t want to go overboard,” she settled on, “I wasn’t sure. It’s been a while since I’ve had a first Valentine’s Day.”

Clarke smirked, “ditto.” She handed the chain to Lexa and turned her back to her, running her fingers through her hair to gather it over her shoulder. Lexa fastened the chain on the middle link, fingers fiddling on the clasp. “I feel like a teenager again,” she admitted quietly.

Ignoring the way Andy squeal in protest, Clarke turned back to her girlfriend and smoothed her fingers over Lexa’s clavicle and around the back of her shoulders, kissing her sweetly until she pulled away leaving the brunette’s cheeks flushed. “If it’s any consolation,” she whispered, “I was into the debate team nerds in high school.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thank you so much for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a hot minute but I'm hoping updates will be coming a bit more regular this year, enjoy!

It was late when Clarke finally slid her key into the lock, smiling at the way the porch light was left on for her, and she found herself the kind of bone-tired that could only come from the most back-breaking of shifts.

The hospital had been brutal lately and her residency was kicking her square in the ass—so much so that she considered un ironically considered purchasing a pair of Crocs at her mother’s suggestion until Lexa told her in no uncertain terms that it would be the end of their relationship. And she had missed the arrival and departure of February and March, only to find that in early April the flowers outside the kitchen window had bloomed and she had no recollection of them doing so.

She reached up to snag a finger in the delicate infinity pendant that had found a steady home in the hollow of her throat since Valentine’s morning.

Andy liked to run her fingers over in on lazy mornings spent in bed, tracing a fingernail over and over the symbol until she would turn to Clarke and whisper something resembling ‘it doesn’t end, Mommy’ to which Clarke would reply, ‘that’s the point’.

Lexa caught them one day. Never one for sleeping in—unless bribed with morning sex, which admittedly was a rare commodity—Lexa had appeared phantom-like in the doorway in her workout gear with morning dew clinging to her running shoes with a soft smile on her face that Clarke had snatched and kept close to her heart ever since.

Longing for her bed, Clarke hung her coat on the rack and began to pry her hair from where it sat in a haphazard low bun at the nape of her neck, tugging on hairs that sent the threat of a headache to the base of her skull as she ascended the stairs. What she found, sent warmth flooded her chest.

Lexa in sweatpants and a long-sleeved Henley with the sleeves bunched at her wrists and a pale robe hanging just barely off her frame had her legs crossed and a long strip of ruched red material in her lap that she peered at through round tortoiseshell glasses. A glass of wine sat on the coffee table among magazines and thrift store sewing patterns.

“What are you doing up?” She smiled, rounding the back of the couch to set her purse and keys down on the kitchen island. When Lexa hissed at the prick of the needle in reply, Clarke pulled out the drawer in the island to rummage amongst the junk and found a plastic thimble and leaned over the couch to hand it to her girlfriend.

“This is taking longer than we anticipated,” she frowned, slipping the plastic cover onto her finger as she worked the needle through the fabric to loop the thread under itself and knot it. She cut it with the kitchen scissors and held the bunched fabric out to examine it.

When Andy had come home last week with a flyer for the daycare’s Easter Festival and fundraiser in the bag Clarke had despaired at seeing the note attached that said each child needed to come with a costume for the song and dance number they had been rehearsing since January. Andy was a Gerbera—ironic because Clarke was fairly sure that her daughter had no idea that a Gerbera was a flower let alone what it looked like.

When she thought about parenthood when she was younger, her mother was always there in the back of Clarke’s mind, helping with school pick-ups and sewing recital costumes. But Abby was in New York and short of sticking a few pieces of coloured paper together, Clarke would have more of an idea of how to perform open heart surgery than make a costume.

After offering to cover this particular crisis for Clarke, Lexa was proving herself to be her saviour once again.

“When you said you could sew,” she marvelled at what looked like the top half of the costume laid out on the shag run, “I didn’t think you meant it.”

“My sister taught me believe it or not,” Lexa mumbled picking up three other strips of bunched fabric and smoothing them atop each other over her knees until they created a layered skirt. Clarke would have chosen or not after her one short meeting with Lexa’s surly elder sister as they crossed paths in the shared driveway one morning. “I like it, it’s methodical.”

Of course that would be her reasoning.

She looked to Clarke, holding the skirt up, “is this straight? I think I’m going mad.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

Clarke examined the neat gathers in the fabric, then leaned forwards to delicately remove Lexa’s glasses from beneath her furrowed brows. With her hair in a wilting top knot and a tape measure hung around her neck she looked more a mad hatter than her girlfriend and Clarke watched her blink, slowly coming back to herself.

“What time is it?”

“Half eleven.” Clarke laughed, tangling their fingers and coaxing Lexa off the couch. “Come on Miss Nine-To-Five,” she hooked Lexa’s glasses into the neckline of her tee and took the measuring tape, rolling it up between her fingers. “You have work in the morning.”

Frowning, Lexa looked about to resist but relinquished her fight as Clarke began to do the rounds of the living room, gathering the evidence of her late night home economics crafts session, clearly not about to be argued with.

The separate pieces of the dress and the paper pattern bearing Andy’s measurements were folded atop each other and stacked on the arm of the couch and Clarke stowed the sewing kit in the cupboard below the island on the shelf next to the kiddy paint and the plastic pot of magic markers that lived to complete another day of making Clarke live in fear of her lovely white walls.

They had only had one incident that Clarke could remember—a victory considering how strong willed her three-year-old was.  

“How was your day?” Lexa asked, taking her dishes to the kitchen. She poured the dregs of red wine down the sink and rinsed the glass before slipping it into the top rack of the dishwasher.

“Long,” Clarke lamented, “I had to help Octavia wash the magic marker off her face after an incident with one of the kids in peds and Jackson was out with the flu so I covered his patients. And before you ask,” she pointed a finger at Lexa accusingly, “yes I did shower.” She made the executive decision to do so in the locker room after her shift, using the heavy-duty disinfectant and powdered shampoo from the dispenser—despite how angry it felt on her skin, a repeat of Andy’s flu earlier in the year was the last thing they needed. Now, she intended to scrub off the sour smell with hot water and the vanilla-coconut soap Lexa began slipping into the bottom of the shower when she started staying over.

“I’ve trained you well,” Lexa teased.

Clarke rolled her eyes, pulling Lexa close by the collar of her robe. “How about you?”

“You FaceTimed me during dinner, Clarke.”

“Remind me?” Clarke entreated, voice tilting into a question.

She loved the familiarity of their late night routine—coming home to Lexa in her barest form, home clothes and tortoiseshell glasses, legs crossed in her lap, the useless musings about the things Andy says and how the dishwasher is leaving spots. The utter domesticity of it settled below her ribs, filling the abrasions left by the fires she would spend her days putting out at the hospital.

Lexa relented as easily as Clarke thought she would, telling her about her day—as tedious as it was doing the groundwork for the new project they had her looking into—and how Andy was elbow deep in the sandbox when she picked her up from the daycare as they retreated to the bedroom. In fact, Lexa mentioned dryly, she was sure they could expect a bill in the mail for the sheer amount of sand they brought home with them in the bottom of Andy’s shoes.

“She missed snack time because she was too busy sulking over having to share the sandbox toys with Tris,” she relayed, smearing toothpaste onto her toothbrush.

Squeezing soapy water out of her hair, Clarke groaned from behind the foggy glass screen of the shower door. “I’m dreading teenage hood already.”

By the time she finished in the shower the bathroom was pleasantly warm.

Towel wrapped around herself, she used the facecloth to wick the moisture from the mirror and survey herself—glad to be free of the stink of the hospital and irrational itch of disinfectant on her skin.

“Did her teachers say anything about what time we have to be there on Sunday?”

Lexa mumbled something from the bedroom and when Clarke poked her head out of the bathroom door to question it, her girlfriend had plaid pyjama pants on and was pulling her old college tee over her head, arms stretched upwards so that the taut expanse of her stomach was on show. Clarke blinked at the sting of the toothpaste as she swallowed without her own violation.

“Sorry?”

Lexa pulled the neckline of her tee down. “Ten twenty,” she repeated in quiet amusement, combing her hair away from her face and fixing it into a loose braid. “They go on at quarter-to and Jillian wants them to have time to get changed.”

“It’s a daycare fundraiser,” Clarke scoffed as she went to fish her pyjamas out of the dresser. “Not a Broadway production.”

“We better get used to it, it’s only ballet recitals and gymnastics showcases from here.”

“If you think Andy has the patience to stay still in a ballet class you have another thing coming.” She piqued a brow at the absurdity, Andy could barely sit still through an episode of SpongeBob without squirming, she could hardly see her energetic three-year-old dealing with the discipline that came with ballet class—her own experiences with it aside.

“Break dancing, _maybe_.”  

Lexa snorted from the bed and Clarke flicked her leg where it hung halfway out of the sheets, watching her writhe away as she crossed the room. “I’m going to check on her.”

In the hall she poked her head through her three-year-old’s half-closed bedroom door, adjusting to the dim warmth of the small room until she could see the outline of Andy’s frame sprawled out beneath her comforter. Gingerly, switching off the fairy lights that lay draped over the colourful tepee in the corner that they usually left on while Andy fell asleep despite the light from the hallway, she cringed when Andy sighed a little in her sleep, limbs twisting, half awake.

Clarke settled on her knees next to her edge of the low twin bed, elbows pressing into the mattress as she gently coaxed the three-year-old back to sleep with soft words and a hand on her back.

“Mommy…” she whined into the corner of her pillow, fist drawn up to her chin under the comforter.  

“Go to sleep bub,” Clarke cooed.

“Kiss?”

The sleep-slurred request filled her chest and Clarke let it settle thickly into her bones. Never able to resist the familiar warmth of these late night interactions that Andy would inevitably be unable to remember in the morning. She pressed a kiss to the three-year-old’s hairline and tucked the comforter under her chin before retreating and pulling the door.

“Out cold,” she confirmed, returning to the bedroom to find Lexa still in bed, sprawled against the pillows, glasses folded on the nightstand.

“Good,” Lexa mumbled, deliciously sleepy, “get in here.”

Clarke didn’t need to be told twice, since she left work her entire body was begging for the comfort of her girlfriend and she pulled the comforter up to curl around them, hooking her leg into Lexa’s in the way that made her roll into her.

“You look tired,” Clarke whispered into the inches between them, she shimmied closer so that they shared the same pillow and traced the circles under Lexa’s eyes with a revenant finger, moving to tuck a curl that had strayed from its braid  behind her ear.

Lexa caught her hand and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “Says you.”

“I’m a doctor,” she deflected easily, “it comes with the territory. You,” she pointed an accusatory finger, “should be well rested.”

Reluctant to answer, Lexa closed her eyes, nuzzling back into the pillow. “I heard you get up with Andy last night,” she whispered, “I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

Clarke sighed, something un-named tugging at her chest. With all the daycare drop-offs and craft store runs it was hard to remember sometimes that Lexa was newer to all of this than she was—she had an easiness about her with Andy that was hard to replicate—but the last thing she wanted to do was force her girlfriend into the craziness that was life with a three-year-old. The past three months had been better than Clarke ever could have expected but doubt still lived in the farthest corners of her mind.

(Most days, she learnt to ignore it. Others it was harder).

She trapped Lexa’s hand in hers, playing with her fingers idly. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

“What?”

”Parenthood.”

“You didn’t drag me,” Lexa leaned in softly to press a chaste kiss to her lips. “I stayed.”

And it felt so insurmountably important that Clarke didn’t dare decipher what it meant at this hour. Instead she tamped down the burgeoning smile pulling at the inset line of her lips and admired Lexa’s form from this angle. “So,” she whispered, “about the Crocs—”  

Lexa flung her leg over Clarke’s hip and her arm over her mouth. “Go to sleep, Clarke.”

* * *

When the notice appeared in Lexa’s letterbox two days later, she was only glad Clarke hadn’t taken the initiative to get her mail like she usually did.

Her landlord was a kindly lady in her late sixties who became Lexa’s saviour when she moved to Seattle four years ago after finishing school. A job offer brought Anya to the city a year earlier but as barely more than an intern for her company, her apartment was rudimentary at best and definitely not meant for two grown women and a rescue dog.

When she found the two-bedroom townhouse with a cheap rent she jumped at it.

Now, it seemed Irene wanted to sell-up when the lease ran out in six months’ time and needed Lexa to move out by the end of November.

Moving to unhook Fish’s leash from his collar, she sat the dining room table, letter in hand as she contemplated the news.

She would be lying if she said she hadn’t been expecting this. Irene was forever going on about retiring to the South of France or somewhere equally as exotic and without any family, the only real use of the house was the money that she would get from it. But Lexa had always harboured a secret hope that she would take pity and sell it to her for dirt cheap when the time came.

(Her and Costia had banked on it in fact, but she tried not to dwell on that now).

The obvious answer stared her in the face.

Her living room was littered with evidence of Andy and Clarke; the Baby Alive doll sat positioned among the cushions on the couch where she promised Andy she would keep it safe until she saw her again tomorrow, the sticker chart on the fridge, Clarke’s sweater hanging over the dining room chair, but somehow it was reluctance that made her tuck the letter away into its envelope.

What if it was too soon?

“Have you talked about it with her?” Were Anya’s first words after the barely there ‘thank you’ to the barista and took her coffee and slid into the corner-most booth at the Starbucks at Lexa’s behest an hour later. Despite her frankness and her inability to see anything other than the most straightforward thing—or maybe because of—her sister was the first person who had come to mind when mulling over this issue.

The weather was pathetic for mid-Spring; grey and miserable as the rain beat against the window next to them and Lexa sipped her coffee rather ruefully, staring intently at the sticky stain on the wooden table. “No,” was the short answer.

‘Every time I think I might I get the awful feeling I’m going to put my foot in it and she’s going to leave’ was the long one.

“Well, that would be the first step.”

Lexa fixed her sister with a pointed stare. “Thank you,” she said flatly, “for that stellar advice.”

Anya shrugged. “Someone had to tell you. Before you get stuck in that head of yours.”

Lexa swallowed. Anya liked to tell her that she was a pessimist. On the contrary, Lexa thought of herself as a hopeless optimist. There was an easy beauty in something as simple as a morning routine or the way the flowers all had the same instinctual urge to bloom in the Spring. It was just experience that was letting her down on that front because, for lack of a better explanation, none of her experiences to date had been too fantastic.

“I thought this thing was serious?” Anya said prising the lid off the top of her takeaway cup and shaking the sugar sachets. She ripped off the top and poured the contents in, stirring before taking a sip and locking eyes with Lexa.

Lexa smoothed her fingers over her crumpled napkin like she could erase its faults. That was another thing Anya liked to say she was: a control freak. Not being in control meant the situation was unreliable. Lexa didn’t do unreliable situations.

“It is.”

“And?”

She levelled her chin. “I thought Costia and I were serious too.”

“Clarke isn’t Costia,” Anya reminded her seriously. “There’s a whole,” she counted out on her fingers, “five different letters in there. L-A-R-K-E. It’s spunky. I like it.”

Lexa considered it and Anya let her.

In her life there had been work and there had been Anya, taking Fish on early morning jogs around the waterfront and the empty little house, comfy enough as it was that when she passed a couple clinched together out of the cold on the way to work, or a child chasing ducks on the path through the path, it didn’t give her the yearning for anything more than she already had.

Now, Clarke and Andy were infinitely more complex in what Lexa thought was probably the best way possible—delicate and vibrant like stained glass or spun sugar and she was loathe to push to hard against it.

“I’m scared she’ll say no,” she admitted finally, voice low as if anyone in the partially full Starbucks would be interested in her vulnerabilities, fingers twisting against the plastic lid of her cup. “It’s not just about Clarke, she has to think about Andy too. I don’t want to overstep.”

Anya scoffed. “Lexa, the kid calls you ‘Mommy’ half the time, there’s no such thing. You know what there is such a thing as though?” Lexa shook her head in silence, leaving the question for her sister to answer. “You,” an accusatory finger was pointed and Lexa felt chastised, “over-thinking things.”

* * *

 “Stay where we can see you please, Dee.”

Five steps ahead of them Andy—grinning in her blue polka-dot dress, yellow rain boots and wilting blonde top knot—nodded in a great rush.  

Thankfully, the unpredictable Spring weather held despite the downpour during the week, and the park that sat fifteen minutes down the road and over the street from the daycare was decorated with bunting and crepe paper flowers, wicker baskets filled with colourful eggs that were clearly decorated by preschoolers.

Three bounce houses, food carts, a face-painting booth and a makeshift stage formed a semi-circle and Clarke, seeing Andy eye the face-paint with an eager look, went to fish a couple of bills out of her purse.

It felt stupid, but suddenly, the idea of an outing that wasn’t soggy and didn’t include a load of muddy laundry was the best thing in the world—better than coffee or being able to sleep past eight a.m. She leaned into Lexa, moaning

“Mommies! Face-paint!” Andy had her flower costume—finished in the wee hours of last night by Lexa—lovingly clutched to her chest as she lifted a finger to point.

“We see that baby.”

The line for the booth was long enough for Andy to peruse the options on the laminated sheet of A4 paper given to her as they approached, weaving herself between Clarke and Lexa’s legs as she peered at the designs.

Clarke lent over to Lexa who had Fish’s leash wound around her palm in an effort to keep the puppy from his effort to chase the ducks wandering the lawn. “Time check?”

“Ten,” Lexa replied. “But I don’t want to be responsible if we’re subjected to the wrath of Jillian.”

Considering, Clarke tapped Andy on the shoulder, “just a small one, though.”

“This one,” the three-year-old held up the card to Clarke, tapping the rainbow and cloud with a finger and an intent little look and Clarke nodded approvingly.

“Good choice,” she handed a five dollar bill to the three-year-old with great ceremony and watched her cradle it with reverent hands. “Can you be very careful with that?”

Wide, eyed, Andy nodded. “Uh huh.” She tapped the card again with her pointer finger, “’an you?”

“Oh,” Clarke shook her head, laughing, “Mommy isn’t getting her face painted baby.”

Andy’s face contorted into something that made Clarke’s heart pinch. “But Momma is,” she turned on the heel of her yellow rain boot to where Lexa had crouched next to Fish, finger hooked around his collar, “right Momma?”

Clarke’s jaw gaped in betrayal as Lexa looked up at her sheepishly, hiding the side of her face in Fish’s fur. “It was her condition for putting shoes on this morning,” Lexa admitted with a impish grin, “and she gave me the eyes. I couldn’t resist.”

Rolling her eyes, Clarke tugged Lexa up and shoved the laminated card under her nose, trying to stifle her burgeoning smile to maintain her air of annoyance. “You need to get better at saying no.”

Lexa cocked her head. “No.”

“You’re going to be the death of me.”

With a great show of reluctance, Clarke picked the collection of tiny daisies and stepped forwards to squat in the plastic kiddie chair when it was their turn, knees against her chest as the woman gave her a sympathetic smile before dipping the slim brush in white paint and touching it to her cheek. Clapping, Andy let Lexa take her costume off of her to make sure it didn’t get paint on it—tucking it gently into the yellow bumblebee backpack she had been saddled with—and sat happily in the chair next to Clarke.

Juggling leash and backpack, Clarke watched Lexa slide her phone out of her pocket, commanding them both to ‘say cheese’ as Clarke vowed to get her back.

Twenty minutes later, having handed Andy—changed into her costume in the restrooms and pointing out the rainbow on her cheek to every passer-by—over to her daycare teacher, backpack in tow, they met Octavia and her boyfriend bedecked with face paint and a puppy who had gotten into the glitter.

“Clarke!” The nurse flung her arms around her shoulders, tilting Clarke’s chin to the right to see the full detailing of the five daisies positioned in a cluster over her cheek bone. “Oh good, you look like a six-year-old’s birthday party threw up on you.”

She grinned, “better than a six-year-old throwing up on me,” she said, earning a grimace from her friend. “Octavia,” she directed her to where Lexa stood, wrangling Fish with a gentle half smile on her face, “this is Lexa.”

If she took charge, she thought, she could hide the way her stomach was threatening to evacuate her body at the thought of her friend saying something like she would in the hospital break room. Something like ‘when’s the wedding’ or ‘Clarke tells me every single day about her undying love for you’, which while not strictly a lie, would be the absolute death of her.

“Lexa,” Octavia grinned instead, “the girlfriend.”

Clarke sagged in palpable relief.

“The nurse,” Lexa’s smile brightened and Clarke held it to her chest and cherished it. She leaned closer to slip her fingers under Lexa’s free palm and loved the way Lexa leaned into her easily. “I’m glad you got the marker off your face.”

Barking sharply, Fish pulled at the leash to jump at the half-eaten soft pretzel Octavia had clutched in a napkin in her hand, ready to make a catch before Lexa reached down with an apologetic look to rub a hand over his head in distraction.

Octavia let him explore the tips of her shoes. “Clarke as flattered as I am that you talk about me at home you should probably spend more time with your girl, it seems she’s found someone else.”

“Sorry,” Lexa smiled bashfully, “this is fish.” She scratched behind Fish’s ear with her thumb, “Fish, this is Octavia.”

“But you can call me Auntie O,” Octavia squatted down on the dewy grass to pour over the puppy, cooing at him in exaggerated baby talk as he continued to go for her pretzel.

“Thank you for coming,” Clarke sighed when she stood, doughy treat salvaged from the puppy’s attempts, “you didn’t have to.”

Octavia shook it off. “I practically helped raise her for three months, ‘course I did.” On tip toes she made a show of looking around the park crowded with parents and kids from the daycare as well as the local community. Clarke saw the woman from the grocery store who always stopped to comment on how ‘darling’ Andy was and offered a wave. “Lincoln should be around here somewhere too,” Octavia explained, straining to see, “he said he was getting coffee. I think the glitter and screaming toddlers scared him off.”

“You two aren’t there yet?” Lexa teased.

Octavia rolled her eyes dramatically, “don’t start.”

Before Clarke could find it within her to love her girlfriend any more, a man with what looked like an army buzz cut in a tight grey tee and jeans came shouldering his way through the crowd carrying a dinky tray of coffee—one straight and iced and the other sickeningly colourful—all six foot something of him cradling it so delicately in his hands it was almost laughable.

He made a beeline for Octavia, letting the nurse prise the pink and white frappuccino out of its holder with a peck on his cheek. “Guys,” she settled easily into side, “this is—”

“Lexa?”  

Octavia’s brow furrowed. “Not unless you have something to tell me,” she said to Lincoln smartly.

He shook his head, indicating to Lexa who stood with bewilderment tugging at her jaw as she raised a hand in a wave. “Linc,” she said in the tone she reserved for only Clarke, Andy or her sister on the phone. It was the soft timbre—lullaby like—she had approached Clarke with when she found her struggling with Andy on the doorstep that afternoon and it only made confusion at the current situation root itself deeper within Clarke.

Lincoln enveloped her into a hug faster than explanations could be had, and when they pulled back, she set her arms on either of his shoulders to appraise him in awe, happiness creeping over her face in a way that made Clarke’s stomach flip-flop like she was in the second-grade. “What are you doing here?”

“I should ask the same about you.” He marvelled. “Last time I saw you were avoiding your date to the sixth grade dance and pining over a fourteen-year-old.”

“I didn’t pine,” she hit him in the chest.

“Did you ever talk to her?”

Her cheeks coloured and she repeated adamantly, “I didn’t pine.”

“Do you two know each other?” Blatantly confused, Octavia looked to Lincoln for a cue.

Lexa and Lincoln exchanged looks—as if checking—before he nodded and Lexa smiled wonderfully softly. “We lived in the same foster home for four years,” she explained.   

“When Lexa was going through her angry eye-liner phase,” Lincoln added and Lexa reddened exponentially as Octavia’s face broke out into the biggest grin.

“Please tell me you have pictures?”

“How about we go and find the little girl’s room.” Clarke announced as a statement more than a question before Lexa could crawl into a hole and die of embarrassment. “Nice to meet you, Lincoln.” With a sympathetic smile, she reached out to squeeze Lexa’s hand, hoping she understood the unspoken ‘take as long as you need’ before dragging her friend away by the forearm and ignoring her complaints about abandoning her boyfriend.

“Small world,” Octavia mused, adjusting her hair in the mirror when they found the restroom and despite the stall door between them, Clarke could practically hear the shit-eating grin.

She rolled her eyes, flushing the toilet and unlatching the door to glare at her friend in the mirror. “Stop thinking about my girlfriends awkward teen phase!”

“Nothing against her,” Octavia waved her off, leaning against the brick with her frappuccino as Clarke washed her hands, “I’m sure she was the coolest emo on the block.”

Clarke hummed without looking up, shaking the excess water off of her hands before foregoing the barely working hand dryer to wipe them off on her jeans. “Did you know Lincoln was in foster-care?”

Octavia looked taken aback at the question. “He’s mentioned it. When we were making Thanksgiving plans last year he told me his parents weren’t in the picture.” She shrugged. “Two and two.”

“Lexa doesn’t talk about it much,” Clarke said. To be honest she thought it was the first time she had openly admitted it in the time that Lexa knew her, as wonderfully well-spoken and amazing as she was, certain subjects Clarke had felt out were no-go zones.

“There probably isn’t much to talk about.” Octavia shrugged, stepping back to avoid bowling over two rabbit-onesie clad four-year-olds. “Anyway you should know I’m counting on you to find that picture and if you don’t I’ll hold you personally accountable. That’s two things now,” she counted them off on the fingers of her free hand, “your house warming and photos from Lexa’s sixth grade dance.”

Clarke crossed her arms over her chest, forging a head to find their significant others. “Keep that up and I _will_ host a housewarming party. Without you.”

* * *

“So…angry eye-liner?” Clarke sidled up to Lexa as they sat, jammed into the kiddy sized fold out lawn chairs positioned in four rows in front of the stage, elbows leaning on knees and phone in hand. From where they were, Clarke could see a gaggle of uncoordinated three-year-olds bumping each other in the makeshift wings. Andy patted the two ovals of fabric that had been pinned to her hair like petals before tapping another girl on the shoulder to make sure she knew it was there too.

“It’s not what you’re thinking, I promise you,” Lexa sounded not-at-all regretful to break Clarke’s illusion. “I was just trying to impress someone.”

“The fourteen-year-old?” Clarke smirked.

She watched Lexa’s lips contort in what she could only call a pout as she buried her face in the screen of her phone, shading it to select the camera icon before holding it up to the stage. “You’re a fourteen-year-old.”

Before Clarke could fire back something about middle-school insults and how it was a wonder she wasn’t the biggest catch in her grade, a round of applause rose from the audience and the collective sound of camera phones starting a recording drowned out all else. A teacher came on stage with a squeaky microphone and thanked all the parents and friends for coming and, a line of three-year-olds all in variations of a flower costume tottered onto the stage, hand in hand like a line of paper dolls. Compared to the girl next to her—in what looked like a leftover Halloween costume that was a sorry excuse for a daisy and probably would have been Clarke’s reality had Lexa not saved the day—Andy looked award-winning.

Quietly, Lexa sat up a little straighter, tapping her phone to zoom in on their little blonde Gerbera in the second row who broke character to stand on the tip toes of her garishly rain boots and waved.

(Though honestly, Clarke thought, any clothes at all was an achievement for the child who ran around in her night-time pull-up when it came time to get dressed because clothes were either ‘too hot’ or ‘not what Scooby Doo’ would wear).

She curled a knuckle and commandeered Lexa’s chin with her finger until they were face to face and Lexa was frowning adorably at being pulled away from the sight of their daughter’s uncoordinated song and dance to ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ She pressed their lips together and the crinkle between Lexa’s brows smoothed out to something delicate.

“Thank you,” she said, even though she wasn’t terribly sure what she was saying thank you for.

Lexa bit her bottom lip until her teeth flashed, smiling tucking itself into the corners of her mouth in the way Clarke wanted to bottle and keep. “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading! comments and kudos appreciated!


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